'The Mummy' director on blockbusting characters

The universal monster films are all character stories.
The are first and foremost character stories and our ability to sympathize with those monsters is what makes them special.
Please meet Princess Amunet.
She will claim what she has been denied.
[MUSIC]
The audience only cares as much about the spectacle
As they're invested in the characters, that's it, there's nothing else really.
And for me, I tend to always need to understand the emotional line of whatever the characters are going through in order to understand why the movie is relevent.
And if I can't connect with what the characters are going through or who they are, I have a very hard time watching the move.
And audiences are too smart now.
It's rare that you can give them a sequence that feels like they haven't seen a version of it before.
We certainly endeavored to do that in Mummy with things like a plane crash.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
Hi, I'm Sam.
Frankie.
She has my father's eyes and his nose.
I grew up with a lot of great, straight character based films in the movie theater and it's rare that you get that experience now and it's a bummer that you don't get that experience.
Because part of what I loved about it was the communal experience.
Films like that have now found a new place.
It either lives now on Netflix or, you know, MTV or...
It's a different kind of thing, and every once in a while, an amazing character movie will rise above the crowd and the world will see it and embrace it.
[SOUND]
You've gotta care about the characters, first and foremost.
That's it.
That's the ball game.

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